Sherlock Holmes and Philosophy Part 15

Holmes then follows Watson home only to expose himself as his long lost friend come back to life. Holmes is always disguising himself and allegedly fooling Watson, although whether or not Watson is really taken in is up for debate. But one thing is for certain; Sherlock Holmes loves to dress up, and does so ten times throughout his career. In addition to being a seaman, b.u.m, an opium addict, and a woman, he's disguised himself as a clergyman in "The Scandal in Bohemia" and a priest in "The Adventure of the Final Problem." He's definitely fond of portraying himself as a spiritual seeker.

And where has he been while Watson has been mourning his demise? He confesses he's been traveling for two years in Tibet, where he "amused myself visiting llasa, and spending some days with the head lama." Some Sherlockians have speculated that Holmes may have used this time to become a Dharma b.u.m, a Buddhist initiate practicing the meditation of awareness and observation. It's a romantic idea, and certainly inspires all of the duality that Kerouac's life and ideals contained, in that Holmes like Kerouac was a truth seeker who was also a very flawed human being.

The Practice of Patient Attention So how does he access his genius? Perhaps there are clues to his success in The Yoga Sutras of Pantajali. This is a Hindu text and the foundation of all yoga practice. It owes much of its origins to Buddhism, and the samadhi techniques are identical to the jhanas in the Pali canon (the scriptures of the Theraveda tradition).

The first step is Attention (dharana). Sir Isaac Newton once said, "If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been due more to patient attention than to any other talent."

Most of us have driven somewhere and been thinking about something else and then suddenly realize we've arrived at our destination without any memory of how we got there. When we snap out of it and realize we've been functioning on "autopilot," we understand how Holmes must view his comrade Watson, who no matter how hard he tries can never quite achieve the level of attention that is indispensible to Holmes in solving his cases. Watson's whole life seems to function on autopilot. He is constantly amazed at the details that Holmes can discern from the smallest bit of evidence. But it's not enough for someone to be able to focus their attention on the details as Holmes does, for many times in the stories Watson tries to make a.s.sumptions based on what he observes when he focuses his attention. Inevitably, Holmes sets him straight and proves him wrong.

The prolonged holding of the perceiving consciousness in that area of the brain is meditation (dhyana). The second step that Holmes uses is to fix his attention on a visible object with a single penetrating gaze. By doing this he directs his attention on the smallest details until they reveal more of their characteristic nature to him than a single glance could take in. He focuses the laser-light intensity of his consciousness on the crime scene evidence and takes in all the details that are always overlooked by Scotland Yard. In A Study in Scarlet, he demonstrates how fiercely his attention can be focused: "The writing on the wall was done with a man's forefinger dipped in blood. My gla.s.s allowed me to observe that the plaster was slightly scratched in doing it, which would not have been the case if the man's nail had been trimmed. I gathered up some scattered ash from the floor. It was dark in colour and flaky-such an ash is only made by a Trichinopoly. I have made a special study of cigar ashes-in fact, I have written a monograph upon the subject. I flatter myself that I can distinguish at a glance the ash of any known brand either of cigar or of tobacco."

It is just in such details that the skilled detective differs from the Gregson and Lestrade type. No wonder Watson's head is in a whirl after witnessing the ability of his friend to discern such penetrating details. A couple of paragraphs later he tells Watson, "I'm not going to tell you much more of the case Doctor. You know a conjurer gets no credit when once he has explained his trick; and if I show you too much of my method of working, you will come to the conclusion that I am a very ordinary individual after all."

Was this a foreshadowing of Doyle's friends.h.i.+p-and the unraveling of that friends.h.i.+p over this very issue-with Houdini?

Holmes next task is to direct the perceiving consciousness to illuminating the essential meaning of the problem he's examining and to free himself from his personality and separateness. This is contemplation (samadhi). These are the moments we find Holmes sunk into his chair with a four-pipe problem or scratching on his violin struggling to comprehend the meaning of his evidence. He struggles to illuminate the truth. And none of this would be possible if he wasn't able to relinquish all personal bias, all desire to prove himself right (like Gregson and Lestrade), and all desire for personal recognition or profit.

Sherlock Holmes loves truth for its own sake. This is the essence of his spiritual core. He doesn't want publicity, wealth or accolades although it must be said that he's not above a bit of pride in his abilities. Watson tells us, "I had already observed that he was as sensitive to flattery on the score of his art as any girl could be of her beauty." But this is different than seeking truth or justice for recognition, and in fact Holmes seems to be quite the opposite in that regard. Watson says in "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot,"

". . . I have continually been faced by difficulties caused by his own aversion to publicity. To his somber and cynical spirit all popular applause was always abhorrent, and nothing amused him more at the end of a successful case than to hand over the actual exposure to some orthodox official, and to listen with a mocking smile to the general chorus of misplaced congratulation."

The Awakened One Whether consciously or unconsciously Holmes appears to be following The Yoga Sutras of Pantanjali in his methods and techniques of deduction. When attention, meditation, and contemplation are exercised together, he achieves perfectly concentrated meditation. Holmes has the ability to set aside his personal limitations and judgment of his perceiving consciousness and can open himself to what can be called the All-consciousness to decipher his dilemmas. This is the place where his discoveries come from and where his spark of genius ignites.

We can't know if Holmes followed any particular spiritual path or whether he was a Buddhist or simply an agnostic as the lapsed Catholic Doyle defined himself. Later in his life Doyle became an avid Spiritualist believing in and promoting the supernatural, something Holmes disproves again and again. As did his friend Houdini, whom he took on in just such a public debate in the press. His desire to believe in charlatans and to even publish statements claiming Houdini was himself supernatural caused him to lose that friends.h.i.+p.

But what are we to make of the fact that Doyle was familiar with Buddhism and wrote a book called The Mystery of Cloomber the year after the first Sherlock Holmes novel was published, a mystery about a man who murders a Buddhist priest and is then avenged by his students (chelas)? It's a strange story about how the three chelas let the man live for forty years with an astral bell tolling over his head to keep him in misery. The priest's name is Ghoolab Shah, a Hindu-Muslim name, and the three students show up wearing red fezzes, so Doyle may not have had any direct experience with any actual Buddhists, but he did doc.u.ment in his autobiography that he'd read A.P. Sinnett's book, Esoteric Buddhism, which doc.u.ments the life of the Buddha and his reincarnations and also introduces the laws of karma.

The word "Buddha" means the "awakened one" and this may have been what Doyle was thinking when he described Sherlock Holmes in "The Veiled Lodger" as sitting upon the floor "like some strange Buddha, with crossed legs, the huge books all around him, and one open on his knees." The yoga sutras suggest that the conscious cultivation of genius, whether the possessor recognizes it or not, is for certain the power and the vision of a spiritual seeker. Sherlock Holmes may not have consciously recognized that his spirit was full of reverence, of self-less devotion to truth, of humility-that his practice of constant awareness was mindfulness and rooted in the divine.

THE TRACING OF FOOTSTEPS.

Chapter 28.

Why Sherlock Is Like a Good Hip-Hop Song.

Rachel Michaels.

"I'm Sherlock Holmes, the world's only consulting detective. I'm not going to go into detail about how I do what I do because chances are you wouldn't understand. If you've got a problem you want me to solve then contact me. Interesting cases only please.

This is what I do: 1.) I observe everything.

2.) From what I observe, I deduce everything.

3.) When I've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how mad it might seem, must be the truth.

If you need a.s.sistance, contact me and we'll discuss its potential."

-the website of Sherlock Holmes (www.thescienceofdeduction.co.uk) Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson are often solely a.s.sociated with the British Victorian era and its trappings-gas lights, horse carts, telegrams, petticoats, s.e.xual prudery, the cla.s.s system; sort of like d.i.c.kens's A Christmas Carol but with more sensational crimes.

But take them out of the 1890s and into the 21st Century, and we find Holmes and Watson still doing quite well. They have starred in scores of scholarly books (including this one), the popular Guy Ritchie steampunk-influenced Sherlock Holmes films, and the BBC television series ent.i.tled, simply, Sherlock. This series in particular explores the question many Holmes fans have asked themselves in the middle of the night: WWSHD? If Sherlock Holmes was here, now, what would he do?

Sherlock, which stars Benedict c.u.mberbatch as Sherlock and Martin Freeman as John, speculates that Holmes's methods and personality would be a great fit for the present day, with such newfangled contraptions as laptops, the Internet, and cellular phones. One hundred and twenty years after the first stories were published, we still need Holmes's unique abilities. Though the times have changed, the essential characters of Holmes and Watson have not. The way their stories are told, however, is quite different now from the 1890's. While Victorian readers enjoyed Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories in the monthly magazine The Strand (tagline: "A monthly magazine costing sixpence but worth a s.h.i.+lling"), modern readers have a mult.i.tude of media to get our Sherlock Holmes fix, including books, magazines, television, film, comics, websites, webseries, e-books, interactive tablets, and video games.

Not only are the ways we access the stories much more varied, we also have a century's worth of Sherlock Holmes stories and images to consciously or unconsciously reference. It's well doc.u.mented that Sherlock Holmes stars in more movies that any other character in the world; the Guinness Book of World Records lists two hundred and eleven films with seventy-five actors playing Holmes. The world's only consulting detective has starred in eight television series, including his canine incarnation as Sherlock Hound (1984); Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century (1999), his animated venture into the future; as well as the great 1980s Granada series with Jeremy Brett. Both Sherlock and a comic series called Victorian Undead ("Sherlock Holmes vs. ZOMBIES!") appeared in 2010. Conan Doyle's stories have also had innumerable effects on subsequent incarnations of detective and thriller genres in fiction, films, and television.

Conan Doyle's original tales are straightforward, self-contained, and linear; they begin with a problem and end with its triumphant answer. The language is clear and sufficiently descriptive; the gentle hand of Dr. Watson guides us through all of the story's stages, from the client's first interactions with Holmes to the resolution of the case. Holmes applies his methods ("Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth") to the puzzle at hand, the mystery is subsequently resolved, and the reader finishes the story feeling that reason can, and in fact, does, rule the world.

For better or worse, the twenty-first century doesn't seem as simple. Our stories are told in ways that combine many different elements; we seem more mixed up. We blend various fragments-stories, visual techniques, genres, and media themselves-into innovative combinations, making new "originals" out of pieces that had not previously been linked. These stories are often told in a non-linear fas.h.i.+on, as well, making the viewer an active part of the process by having to piece together the narrative.

Think of films by Quentin Tarantino-they contain chunks of spaghetti westerns, kung fu, WWII espionage movies, stories of revenge, grindhouse, and American twentieth-century pop music. These movies blend these disparate sources into new, individual works. The material that comes out of this blending is called a pastiche, and once you start looking for them, you see that they are everywhere. Sherlock Holmes is involved in quite a few, including Sherlock (and the comics with the ZOMBIES!), and he would enjoy discovering his new adventures in the twenty-first century.

A Case of Pastiche Postmodernism, like Victorianism and modernism before it, can be studied through its cultural output of stories, images, music, and media. Cultural theorist Fredric Jameson wrote in The Cultural Turn that one of postmodernism's significant features is "the erosion of the older distinction between high culture and so-called ma.s.s or popular culture." Postmodernists, Jameson continues, "no longer 'quote' such texts . . . they incorporate them, to the point where the line between high art and commercial forms seems increasingly difficult to draw" (emphasis mine). Our immense backlog of culture, from opera to comics, has become democratized and blended together. The modern world allows us to pick and choose strands of stories and images from across time; the playing field is now level.

Sherlock knowingly combines ingredients of prior works with new elements to create a unique work: a pastiche. This word is taken from the French language, and was based on the Italian word pasticcio, itself from the late Latin word for "paste," pasta. This multi-lingual word with multi-layered meanings is appropriate to describe the incorporation of different elements into a single whole. The creators of the pastiche are not only mixing together different pieces from their subconscious, they are consciously referencing and incorporating those elements into their own work.

We're surrounded by pastiches, from television shows (The Simpsons, Family Guy, The Daily Show, Lost, Glee) and movies (Pulp Fiction, Moulin Rouge!, Marie Antoinette, Carlos, Repo! The Genetic Opera) to genres of music-including hip hop, dub, dubstep, and other forms of electronic, rock, jazz, and pop.

An excellent example of pastiche is hip-hop music, a genre which can combine original beats and spoken or sung melodies with any combination of sounds sampled from other sources. Hip-hop songs are not "adaptations" of other works if they feature a Stevie Wonder horn sample, say, or a bit of a Hans Zimmer film score; they are something unique that has been constructed through the use of different parts. A pastiche is like Frankenstein's creature: sewn together to create a new being.

The most current-and trendy-term for this mixing of different pieces into new combinations is "mash-up." These days, anything that combines two different traditions is called a mash-up; a New York Times search of the hyphenated word in their pages includes over ten thousand uses of the term in the past thirty days as I write this, including as a description of the 2011 Oscars, various recipes, music videos, concerts, operas. A mash-up is a pulverized version of pastiche.

The Scientific Use of the Imagination Sherlock frequently uses technology to ill.u.s.trate this continuity throughout its first season. Watson's memoirs have become "The Personal Blog of Dr. John H. Watson." Sherlock uses texts and emails as the nineteenth century's Holmes uses telegrams-to communicate and receive information to solve a case. Both the Victorian and modern Sherlocks have a detailed map of London in their heads; now such systems are called GPS. Sherlock uses his PDA for information as Holmes scours the newspaper searching for information on weather conditions, possible cases, and clues.

As impressive as these toys can be, though, Sherlock is very explicit on one point: that modern technology aids Sherlock's deductions by providing data, but they alone do not solve the crimes. If the newer technology were solely responsible for the deductions, then even Lestrade could solve these cases. It is, of course, Holmes's singular ability to see a narrative chain from the data, and to draw connections between bits of information that seem otherwise unconnected.

Sherlock and John-we call them by their first names when we're talking about the new Sherlock series-still also investigate the old-fas.h.i.+oned way-by breaking into apartments, going to the library, visiting museums, and dodging bullets, with each mini-adventure developing their friends.h.i.+p. The Baker Street Irregulars, once a band of street urchins happy to get a s.h.i.+lling per day and a guinea (roughly one Pound Sterling) for an important clue, have evolved into the use of what Sherlock calls his "homeless network," whose investigative fee has become 50. Fees and technological tools may have changed, but Sherlock Holmes's ability to solve seemingly impossible cases has remained the same.

Eccentric or Sociopath: You Say Tomato, I Say Tomato?

How can we differentiate "postmodernism" from "modernism" or even "Victorianism?" Can society really have changed so drastically in only 150 years? Fredric Jameson answers this question by suggesting that different time periods do not involve total changes of content but rather a "restructuring of a certain number of elements already given: features that in an earlier period or system were subordinate now become dominant, and features that have been dominant again become secondary." Different values and interests become more prominent in one period, then become less culturally relevant in the next. Tendencies present in Conan Doyle's original stories (Holmes's misanthropy and superiority complex) are now played up and exaggerated to fit contemporary sensibilities. This is most evident in Sherlock's portrayal of its main character as a self-proclaimed sociopath (a personality disorder featuring extremely antisocial att.i.tudes and lack of conscience).

Sherlock stays true to Conan Doyle's portrayals of Holmes, with certain amplifications of his eccentricities that reflect a modern sensibility. Like Ritchie's films, the quirks and antisocial tendencies of Sherlock are the focus of his characterization. Sherlock describes himself as "a highly functioning sociopath," and he is indeed a difficult roommate and colleague. A recurring point of discussion between Sherlock and John is Sherlock's lack of empathy towards, well, anyone, as is his insistence that he solves crimes not to help others but to avoid being crushed by his own boredom. The Sherlock in this series is younger than has been presented before, and is accordingly both full of himself and highly concerned with others' respect for his abilities. John is able to guide Sherlock in how normal people think and how to speak to them-valuable skills when trying to gather the type of information that cannot be provided through an email.

While the oddities of Sherlock Holmes are certainly mentioned in the original stories-from the seven per cent solution to his lack of knowledge of the solar system to his mood swings-Conan Doyle presents them with more subtlety. The intervening century of psychology, modernism, and antiheroes (including fellow detective Sam Spade, Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle, Fight Club's Tyler Durden, and serial killer Dexter Morgan) have led to a greater level of acceptance (even expectation) of a flawed hero. Other parts of Conan Doyle's character can now be amplified in Sherlock, fitting with common heroes of the present day.

A Study in . . . Pink!

The first three episodes of Sherlock, "A Study in Pink," "The Blind Banker," and "The Great Game," are vivid examples of pastiche. "A Study in Pink" is particularly instructive in the differences between a straight-up adaptation and a postmodernist pastiche. The Jeremy Brett Adventures of Sherlock Holmes series is a straight-up adaptation-each episode's goal is to be a line-by-line duplication of Conan Doyle's stories, from dialogue to plot to costumes. "A Study in Pink," however, freely adapts from many different sources, as the t.i.tle explains. "A Study in Pink" uses "A Study in Scarlet" as its basic text but tweaks it so much it becomes something different entirely.

The episode begins very much like A Study in Scarlet, with military doctor John Watson returning home from the war in Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder. He runs into Stamford, a colleague from medical school, who introduces him to Sherlock Holmes after Watson mentions he is looking for lodging. Sherlock is then introduced to John (and the audience) in the laboratory at St. Bart's, where he is beating corpses with a stick to verify how bruises may be produced after death. He and John plan to meet the next day to visit the flat in Baker Street.

So far, so not a pastiche. This sequence of events in Sherlock is a direct adaptation of A Study in Scarlet and not a combination of different elements intermingling to create a new text. A "straight" updated adaptation of A Study in Scarlet would have continued in the previous vein. Sherlock would be called in to investigate a male murder victim covered in someone else's blood in Brixton. But the crime takes a different turn in "A Study in Pink;" the victim is female and is found in a shocking pink tailored suit. Sherlock is now in pastiche territory.

c.u.mberbatch's Sherlock uses a variety of tools to investigate the empty room where the body was found. He examines the body's fingers, jewelry, coat, and stockings with a magnifying gla.s.s and uses his PDA to obtain weather information. He systematically determines the five letters "Rache" scratched into the floor next to the body to be most of the word "Rachel." Viewers familiar with Conan Doyle's story will recognize the "Rache" element. In A Study in Scarlet, the police determine "Rache" to be the word "Rachel" but Holmes establishes it as "Rache," the German word for revenge. The situation is now reversed in "A Study in Pink": Sherlock recognizes the word as "Rachel" (later to be determined as the victim's email pa.s.sword) while the police come to the impractical solution of an angry note having been left in German.

Based on the state of her clothing and the day's UK weather forecast, Sherlock concludes that the victim is a media executive coming from the popular television center Cardiff, Wales. The pink-clad corpse is identified by Sherlock as the fourth victim in a string of serial suicides heavily covered by the British media. This creates a new storyline for the murders and eliminates Conan Doyle's plot about nefarious Mormons and an oceancrossing act of revenge.

That original plot of A Study in Scarlet could have translated quite well into the year 2010, from smaller details to large. The letters found in the pocket of the dead man, Enoch Drebber, could have become printed emails, for example, and the motives of religious prejudice, greed, and revenge are still very much in style. The creators of Sherlock made a conscious decision, however, to use a mult.i.tude of elements to tell their story; they chose to employ the method of pastiche.

In this scene, Sherlock also refers to the "heavy rain" that the pink lady had to travel through. This is a direct reference to the video game Heavy Rain (Quantic Dream, 2010) that Sherlock's visual style and theme strongly resemble. Both the game and the television series feature distinctive camera shots with a heavy blurriness around the focal point of the scene that directs the viewer's attention to particular details. Sherlock and Heavy Rain also share the same drab color palette as well as similar plotlines featuring an "Origami Killer" (a major plotline from Sherlock's second episode, "The Blind Banker"). The strongest reference to Heavy Rain, however, is the use of on-screen text to ill.u.s.trate Sherlock's deductive process. Even the font is the same-it's called Johnston and was been used for the London Underground since 1916 (coincidentally the year between the publication of Conan Doyle's The Valley of Fear and "His Last Bow"). All of these elements-from the font to filming techniques to plotlines to showing text on-screen in the first place-were conscious choices made by Sherlock's creators.

So When Is the Lovely Couple Going to Get Killed?

Narrative content is not the only arena in which to find the pastiche, however. All of the choices made to convey the story to the audience-including camera angles, editing, color palettes, and acting styles-also create the experience of the episodes. Television programs have their own conventions, and, more specifically, so do genres of television programs like the detective thriller Sherlock.

We a.s.sume, for example, that contemporary detective thriller programs will consistently feature elements such as a murdermystery, tense music, an investigation of the suspects, a red herring or false trail to ramp up the suspense, and the dramatic solving of the crime. Each of the Sherlock episodes features these elements, as do all of the Law and Order franchises, various realcrime doc.u.mentary programs, and the CSI franchise. Florid acting styles, elaborate costumes, subplots other than how the detectives' dedication to their work makes their family life difficult, and romantic-sounding scores would all seem out of place in a detective thriller. They would, in fact turn the program into a drama, or perhaps a romance.

Therefore, when television programs (or films, or novels, or pieces of music, or nonfiction) share elements with other similar programs of the past and present, they are presenting codes to their audiences that reflect years of development. The programs mix different elements-some original, some not-to create a new individual work. They are pastiches.

The other two first-season episodes of Sherlock, "The Blind Banker" and "The Great Game," similarly combine a plot from a Conan Doyle story with new elements. "The Blind Banker" transforms the coded messages from "The Adventure of the Dancing Men" to street graffiti and mixes in a plot involving the continuing aftereffects of the 2008 financial crisis, an international smuggling ring, and a Chinese circus. Unlike the original stories, John is placed in mortal danger and must be saved by our brainy action hero Sherlock. This mixture of older and contemporary themes fits nicely with the postmodern blend of Victorian fiction, contemporary politics, and television thriller conventions in Sherlock's "The Blind Banker."

"The Great Game" has Sherlock and John on the trail of no less than five mysteries, with their narrative strands interweaving to create a unique combination. In an adaptation of the Conan Doyle story, Mycroft Holmes asks Sherlock's help to find the missing flash drive holding the Bruce-Partington missile project. The other mysteries feature the modern twist that each must be solved within a timeframe of a few hours or an innocent victim will die-placing Sherlock firmly within the realm of blockbuster action movies or TV's 24. The whereabouts of a mad bomber, the death of a television "reality" star, the poisoning of a child, the disappearance of a businessman, and the possible forgery of an Old Master painting are crammed into its ninety minutes. The story climaxes in a standoff reminiscent of a cowboy movie and ends in a sensational cliffhanger. Echoing the purpose of Conan Doyle's original stories-that of thrilling entertainment-"The Great Game" is a vivid example of pastiche.

The Adventure of the Time-Traveling Detective What could be in store for our heroes Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson over the next 120 years? What kinds of crimes will we need them to solve, and with what tools? What parts of Sherlock will stand out to audiences in ten years, or twenty, or one hundred? Will they wonder what it was like to watch a program on a quaint old HD television and not on their head-screens, or how it would be possible to physically hold one of those ma.s.sive-ancient-book-thingies without suction feelers? Will categories like "sociopath" and "banker" even exist?

One thing's for sure, though-no matter what the era, Sherlock Holmes can solve the most singular, improbable cases. His unerring powers of observation and deduction ill.u.s.trate an apparently timeless faith in the applicability of empirical reason. And that, my dear, is elementary.

Chapter 29.

Moriarty's Final Human Problem in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Zoran Samardzija.

My fascination with Sherlock Holmes derives from the fact that I am huge Star Trek fan and nerd. I began to wonder why so many allusions to the fictional world created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle appear throughout the numerous incarnations of Star Trek.

Upon reading the original Holmes stories, I began to understand that when they are referenced, quoted, or holographically recreated, the Star Trek writers do so in order to grapple with the philosophical, ethical, and geopolitical dilemmas for which the Star Trek franchise is best known.

In the timeframe occupied by the original Star Trek series, the first recognizable allusion to Sherlock Holmes occurs in the feature length film Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). After Captain Kirk and Bones are framed and imprisoned for a.s.sa.s.sinating the Klingon Chancellor Gorkon, Spock tells the Enterprise crew, before they begin searching for evidence to reveal the conspiracy, that "an ancestor of mine maintained, that if you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

His appropriation of the famous quote about the power of logic functions as more than just an in-joke for Sherlock Holmes fans. For Trekkers like myself, it also slyly establishes thematic continuity between the original series and the first spin-off: Star Trek: The Next Generation, which is set several decades in the future. In particular, it a.s.sociates Spock with Lt. Commander Data of the Stars.h.i.+ps Enterprise D and Enterprise E, a sentient android who wishes he were capable of human emotions. He, too, happens to be a fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes mysteries.

Upon hearing Spock's citation of Holmes in the movie, I was immediately reminded of two episodes of The Next Generation that aired prior to the sixth film: "Elementary, Dear Data" from 1988 and "Data's Day" from 1991. The former episode establishes Data's propensity to role play as Sherlock Holmes using the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p's holodeck. In the latter episode, Data is investigating an apparent transporter accident when he directly echoes Spock's dialogue as he, too, quotes the virtues of eliminating the impossible. In J.J. Abrams's recent "reboot" movie, Star Trek (2009), the "alternative universe" Spock utters the same famous Holmes quotation.

To use one of Spock's favorite words, I find it fascinating how Star Trek is able to dramatize competing definitions of human nature through its references to Sherlock Holmes. Since Spock is half-human and half-Vulcan (a race that privileges logic and reason at the expensive of emotion), in the Star Trek universe, it is an alien and a sentient android who identify with Sherlock Holmes and share his reasoning abilities. In other words, excessive rationality is characterized as a non-human trait, which means that Star Trek implicitly questions the core philosophical value of the Western Enlightenment that defines reason as the essential trait of humanity. This debate about human nature, however, is most compellingly dramatized in the Sherlock-Holmes-themed episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and the character of Data who engages in a battle of wits with Professor Moriarty who appears as a sentient holographic computer program.

Which Is More Human: An Android Holmes or Holographic Moriarty?

The holographic Professor Moriarty in Star Trek: The Next Generation is introduced during Season Two in "Elementary, Dear Data." The episode begins with Captain Picard's usual captain's log, informing viewers that the Enterprise has arrived early for a rendezvous for their next mission and has nothing to do but wait. As is customary in the series, a pre-t.i.tle credit sequence introduces the dramatic themes of each episode. In this particular case, Lt. Geordie La Forge, the s.h.i.+p's chief engineer, summons Data to engineering to show him his detailed model of a cla.s.sic British battles.h.i.+p. After Data asks why he would be interested in a s.h.i.+p less technologically advanced than the Enterprise, La Forge responds, "That's exactly why this fascinated me, Data. See, it's human nature to love what we don't have."

His comment foretells how the episode frames its debate about human nature. In the broadest sense, the episodes explore whether logic and rationality or intuition and emotions are essential human traits. A careful consideration of its t.i.tle, "Elementary, Dear Data," even hints at what answer the episode will provide. The first thing to note is that it's obviously a play on the famous phrase, "Elementary, my dear Watson," that Sherlock Holmes would utter in the early Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies whenever he wished to emphasize his reasoning to Watson. Here, however, the ironic interlocution of the episode's t.i.tle positions Data against himself; while he roleplays as Sherlock Holmes, he is the one who needs to learn what is elementary about human nature. The line, in fact, is spoken to Data by the s.h.i.+p's doctor, Katherine Pulaski, who does not believe Data can ever become fully human. The context in which she says it is especially important.

For instance, after showing Data his model battles.h.i.+p, La Forge invites Data to partic.i.p.ate in a holodeck simulation of a Holmes mystery. The holodeck, for those unfamiliar with the sprawling Star Trek universe, is a computer controlled virtualreality simulator that crews use mostly for recreational purposes. While attempting the simulation, because of the brute strength of his computational skills and memory Data immediately solves the mystery, much to the annoyance La Forge. Upon leaving the holodeck, the two of them encounter Doctor Pulaski. Overhearing their conversation, she bets Data that he cannot solve a mystery that he was not previously familiar with, implying that he is only truly capable of computation and memorization. When the three of them enter the holodeck, Data once again immediately solves the mystery. This frustrates the doctor who then spins the "elementary" phrase against Data.

PULASKI: (to Geordi) Now, now do you see my point? All he knows is what is stored in his memory banks. Inspiration, original thought, the true strength of Holmes is not possible for our friend. (to Data) I give you credit for your vast knowledge, but your circuits would just short out when confronted by a truly original mystery. It's elementary, dear Data.

In the guise of praising Sherlock Holmes's "true strength" and demeaning Data's computational skills, Doctor Pulaski offers a definition of human nature that privileges intuition. Interestingly enough she claims that it's not Holmes's exemplary reasoning that makes him so great. Rather, it is his eccentricities and originality, features which Data can never develop because he is incapable of overcoming his programming. In other words, Data can only reason but Holmes can employ a wide-range of skills and behavior when solving mysteries. Doctor Pulaski's argument has a distinct Nietzschean flair to it. We can easily imagine that while in Starfleet Academy Doctor Pulaski must have read Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human where he writes in the aphorism "The illogical necessary" that: The illogical is a necessity for mankind, and that much good proceeds from the illogical. It is implanted so firmly in the pa.s.sions, in language, in art, in religion, and in general in everything that lends value to life . . . Only very naive people are capable of believing that the nature of man could be transformed into a purely logical one. (R.J. Hollingdale translation, p. 28) The inability to be illogical and irrational, in other words, is what prevents Data from becoming fully human. Conversely, the fact that Moriarty in Star Trek has those traits makes him more recognizably human than Data. Consider, for example, how he comes into existence in the first place. After Doctor Pulaski's declaration of "fraud," La Forge yet again programs the computer, this time with the following directive, "in the Holmesian style create a mystery to confound Data with an opponent who has the ability to defeat him," in effect creating the sentient holographic simulation of Moriarty who is capable of "originality" and "inspiration," which are the very traits Data cannot develop.

This Moriarty that comes into existence, then, differs from the one Sir Arthur Conan Doyle describes in his original stories. Professor Moriarty plays a prominent role only in the notorious "The Final Problem" but his legacy as Sherlock Holmes's greatest arch-nemesis is unquestionable. In the story, Watson narrates how the Professor and Holmes fell to their deaths at Reichenbach Falls.

However, as devoted Sherlock Holmes readers are aware, a decade later Arthur Conan Doyle resurrected his most famous creation for a series of new stories after deciding against permanently killing him off. In "The Adventure of the Empty House" we learn that Holmes did in fact defeat Moriarty but faked his death in order to escape from Moriarty's criminal cohorts. Readers were thus deprived of subsequent battles between Holmes and his greatest antagonist. It also means that Doyle left unexplored several fascinating philosophical and ethical questions about the nature of Moriarty's criminal tendencies that are teasingly implied by the hyperbolic descriptions Holmes provides of him in "The Final Problem."

I often wonder about the intellectual legitimacy of Holmes's description of Moriarty. In the famous pa.s.sage, Holmes tells Watson how Moriarty became a criminal: "He is a man of good birth and excellent education, endowed by nature with a phenomenal mathematical faculty . . . But the man had hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind. A criminal strain ran in his blood, which, instead of being modified, was increased and rendered infinitely more dangerous by his extraordinary mental powers."

After discussing how he became of aware of Moriarty's shadowy presence in London, Holmes tells Watson about Moriarty's criminal methodology. He adds: "He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of his web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans."

Given the hyperbolic intensity of Holmes's description of Moriarty-"a genius;" "extraordinary mental powers;" "The Napoleon of crime"-the question arises: What compelled Holmes, a master of logical abduction, to use his abilities to solve crimes while Moriarty uses his to become the definitive criminal genius of London? Especially from the perspective of a modern reader, Holmes's own answer to this intractable natureversus-nurture dilemma relies on a regrettable idea that was no doubt commonplace during the Victorian and Edwardian Eras in which Doyle's stories were set. In other words, the recourse to biological determinism or "hereditary tendencies" to explain Moriarty's path to evil relies more on a hasty, inductive generalization rather than Holmes's usual impeccable abductive reasoning.

While the Moriarty in Star Trek: The Next Generation certainly appears to be a "philosopher" and "an abstract thinker," he in fact rebels against his "hereditary tendencies" and programming to be an evil mastermind. He exhibits an irrational and illogical commitment to securing his own right to exist. In essence, one can say that the Moriarty in "Elementary, Dear Data" has subconscious desires and intuitions, rather than deterministic "hereditary" traits, which he can use to gather knowledge about his "world." Consider what he says to Data and La Forge: MORIARTY: My mind is crowded with images. Thoughts I do not understand yet cannot purge. They plague me. You and your a.s.sociate look and act so oddly, yet though I have never met nor seen the like of either of you I am familiar with you both. It's very confusing. I have felt new realities at the edge of my consciousness, readying to break through. Surely, Holmes, if that's who you truly are, you of all people can appreciate what I mean.

Moriarty, in other words, doesn't come to understand that he is a holographic simulation by using Holmesian reasoning. As his dialogue indicates, Moriarty is haunted by intuitions about which subsequently he must reason and make logical inferences. Reason, therefore, emerges as a secondary trait of the expression of human nature. Only later in the episode does Moriarty make philosophical and logical arguments about his sentience, such as in the following conservation he has with Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Data: MORIARTY: Is the definition of life "cogito ergo sum"? I think, therefore I am.

PICARD: That's one possible definition.

MORIARTY: It is the most important one for me, the only one that matters. You or someone asked your computer to program a nefarious fictional character from nineteenth-century London and that is how I arrived, but I am no longer that creation. I am no longer that evil character, I have changed. I am alive. I am aware of my own consciousness.

Moriarty refers to Descartes's famous cogito ergo sum proposition about existence, which is certainly one of the cornerstones of Western Philosophy. And the Enterprise crew are ultimately convinced, but there remains a pragmatic problem: As a holographic projection, Moriarty doesn't consist of matter. He's still only energy and light and, as such, he cannot ever leave the confines of the holodeck, which is a problem the sequel episode "s.h.i.+p in a Bottle" revisits. He agrees, therefore, to be placed in protected computer memory until it can be determined what is to be done with him.

The Evil Genius that Turns Moriarty into a Brain in a Vat Moriarty's story is resolved on Star Trek: The Next Generation in the episode "s.h.i.+p in a Bottle." Instead of merely repeating the philosophical debates about human nature from "Elementary, Dear Data," the show cleverly presents a solution to Moriarty's inability to leave the holodeck. The solution offered represents a novel twist on the old philosophical dilemma of the "evil genius," which is updated as the problem of "a brain in a vat." In simple terms the idea is this: if some advanced species so desired, they could so completely deceive your senses that all your ideas about reality would be wrong. As you read this sentence, for example, you could be a brain in a vat receiving "false" stimuli, as some mad scientist forces you to read essays on Sherlock Holmes and philosophy. In the modern era, this radical skepticism about whether you can ever really know "external reality" was first articulated by Rene Descartes in Meditations on First Philosophy where he writes: I shall then suppose, not that G.o.d who is supremely good and the fountain of truth, but some evil genius not less powerful than deceitful, has employed his whole energies in deceiving me; I shall consider that the heavens, the earth, colours, figures, sound, and all other external things are nought but the illusions and dreams of which this genius has availed himself in order to lay traps for my credulity.

So how does the idea of existing only as a brain in a vat in some evil scientist's lab solve Moriarty's problem? "s.h.i.+p in a Bottle" begins with Data and La Forge once again role-playing in a Sherlock Holmes mystery in the holodeck. However, they discover that it is malfunctioning because its "spatial orientation systems" project left-handed characters as right-handed and vice versa. That piece of techno-babble foreshadows what happens later in the episode. After encountering the system error, Data and La Forge summon Lt. Barclay to fix the holodeck, and he inadvertently releases Professor Moriarty from protected memory. Much to the concern of Captain Picard, the holographic Moriarty experienced the pa.s.sage of time while stored in memory. As he states, he felt "brief, terrifying periods of consciousness . . . disembodied, without substance." Moreover, Moriarty no longer trusts the Enterprise to figure out how he can leave the holodeck, which is understandable after experiencing such terrible existential dread.

The subsequent plot of "s.h.i.+p in a Bottle" resembles films about virtual reality such as The Matrix (1999) or David Cronenberg's eXistenZ (1999), though it aired several years before either (another example of how ideas in Star Trek are often ahead of our time). Moriarty takes control of the holodeck again, but this time he creates a simulation of the entire Enterprise within the Sherlock Holmes holodeck simulation he "exists" in. His aim in doing so is slightly convoluted. He wants to deceive Picard, Data, and Barclay into believing that through sheer will power alone, he is in fact capable of leaving the holodeck. Once he does that, he takes control of the s.h.i.+p and demands that the crew find a way to have the Countess Barthalomew, who is also a holographic simulation, leave the holodeck-knowledge he would use "in reality" to actually leave the holodeck himself.

In other words, Moriarty's plan recalls the idea of becoming trapped in dream within a dream, a concept popularized by Christopher Nolan's puzzle film Inception (2010). Unlike with Inception, however, audiences of "s.h.i.+p in a Bottle" aren't meant to try and decode dream from reality by searching for textual clues. Whereas the former is constructed to allow for multiple interpretations and has an open-ended conclusion, the Star Trek episode advances the more radical proposition that, ultimately, humans can never have certainty about the nature of reality.

Only Data, who is not human, but an android, is able to deduce that he, Picard, and Barclay are still in a holodeck program because of its malfunctioning "spatial orientation systems." Because of his reasoning abilities, the three of them create a third holodeck simulation within Moriarty's simulation running within the initial Sherlock Holmes program-or think of it as a dream within dream within a dream. In their simulation, they convince Moriarty that he and the Countess have left the holodeck and the two of them take a shuttlecraft and leave the Enterprise.

Once that happens they exit all the simulations and keep Moriarty running in the program where he thinks he is freely roaming the universe. In his simulated reality, Moriarty apparently lives on thinking he has finally become human. Presumably he can never discern that he has been deceived. The final dialogue between Barclay, Picard, and the s.h.i.+p's counselor Troi nicely encapsulates the idea that complete certainty about the nature of reality is impossible. Picard asks hypothetically, "Who knows? Our reality might not be all that different from theirs. All this might be nothing more than an elaborate simulation being run inside a little device, sitting on someone else's table." In other words, humans can never deduce that we are "a brain in a vat," or part of an elaborate computer simulation. Like Moriarty in Star Trek: The Next Generation we choose to believe that we are not the subject of sensory experiments from some evil genius or deity. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we believe in external reality and that we are human. Such a belief is not possible for Data. Unfortunately, his advanced reasoning allows him to know when he is being deceived by a computer simulation.

Since Data lacks the ability to have irrational beliefs, he can never become fully human. As Trekkers are aware, this dilemma is a reccurring storyline in the Star Trek: The Next Generation series and subsequent movies. For example, he experiments with an "emotion chip" and a program that allows him to dream, but these technologies meant to replicate the human experience of the irrational never succeed. Thus for Data a peculiar paradox emerges: only in death does he come close to achieving humanity. As the conclusion of the film Star Trek X: Nemesis (2002) reveals, he sacrifices himself to save the lives of others. In other words, believing he is still not human does not prevent him from acting humanely. In that regard, his fate is preferable to the holographic Moriarty trapped in a computer simulation, believing that he has become human.

I can imagine-in some distant future-the holographic Moriarty growing bored and restless from traveling throughout his virtual universe. Will he eventually long for death? Data at least found a way to terminate his programming, but Moriarty may never be able to escape the vast tomb of his computer simulation. Sometimes believing you are human has its limitations.